Episode 105: Growing Power with Will Allen

What could be a more fitting and inspiring organization to profile for Growing a Greener World than Growing Power? Patti and Joe visit the organization’s headquarters in Milwaukee and Nathan cooks up a special dish with some popular greens.

In their own words

Conceived to provide teens with jobs, Growing Power also feeds the community

In 1993 Growing Power began as a way to provide jobs for teens and fresh produce for the community. Over the years this brainchild of Will Allen, has become, in their own words, “ a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner.”

Profiled by the New York Times

The New York Times profiled Will Allen and this amazing organization: “Like others in the so-called good-food movement, Allen, who is 60, asserts that our industrial food system is depleting soil, poisoning water, gobbling fossil fuels and stuffing us with bad calories. Like others, he advocates eating locally grown food. But to Allen, local doesn’t mean a rolling pasture or even a suburban garden: it means 14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.”Read the entire article:

Teaching others is of paramount importance and Allen spends much of his time speaking as well as conducting training seminars. Among the areas of expertise at Growing Power is: acid-digestion, anaerobic digestion for food waste, bio-phyto remediation and soil health, aquaculture closed-loop systems, vermiculture, small and large scale composting, urban agriculture, perma-culture, food distribution, marketing, value-added product development, youth development, community engagement, participatory leadership development, and project planning.

Participating in the launch of Childhood Obesity Prevention

Will Allen and Michelle Obama

Just this year Allen was tapped by Michelle Obama to participate in the launch of Childhood Obesity Prevention and was included in Time Magazine’s top 100 people who most affect the world. Now we get to see behind the scenes and hear in his own words the driving force behind Growing Power.

Growing A Greener World is a national gardening series on Public Television that features organic gardening, green living and farm to table cooking. Each episode focuses on compelling and inspirational people making a difference through gardening. This gardening series covers everything from edible gardening and sustainable agriculture to seasonal cooking and preserving the harvest.

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My Husband and I have been growing a tiny garden for the last 15 yrs. My Grandmother use to have a garden in Mississippi. When I visited her during he summer I was fascinated to see how vegetable grew. My husband who had never seen how vegetable grew. He now is addicted to gardening especially tomatoes and peppers. Sadly we know very little about soil, composting etec. I’m looking forward to coming to the workshop. I live in Chicago. I will be worth the drive